


Strings

by GStK



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Summertime Record
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-26 23:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2670353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/pseuds/GStK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sleep brings intimacy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strings

**Author's Note:**

> Abstract. Vague spoilers for most of Kagerou Project.  
> Mekakucity continuity.

She reaches for him first.

It's instinct, she thinks in the lighter hours, when they're twined together like two cords wound tight. She's loved him for years, so much and so hard to the point where it's only when they're together that she feels really at peace.

It's natural, like this. She threads their hands when she's on the cusp of slumber, watching the rise and fall of his every breath and letting it lull her to sleep. He's safe, she's safe. They're safe. He's the one who pulls her close and tangles their limbs, and it's his fault that by the time they wake, it's almost impossible to remember where she ends and he starts.

She falls asleep to his peaceful warmth and wakes to his quiet smile, and every morning she thinks _oh_ , _I'm in love_.

* * *

He sleeps with his back to her.

When it's just them like this, sleep doesn't come until the late hours of the night, not until his music program's crashed and she's seen the blue light of the game over screen one too many times. They clamber into bed like it's nothing, exchange quiet breaths and words of silence, and sleep. This is not romance, or even companionship, not really; this is sharing the same space and waiting for the dawn to come.

It's normal. It didn't used to be, when her bed was a folder on his computer and she still couldn't rest, not in any real way. The warmth at his back, the rustle of fabric, the soft sighs that show she's alive: it was hard to get used to, but now it's easy. Now it's easy, being with her.

When their eyes meet in the morning and the first words on her lips are _Good morning_ , _master_ , he cracks up and weathers the storm of her embarrassment. He says nothing of the way they're turned towards each other, close, and she thinks only of how they're alive.

* * *

He reels him in to the point of suffocating.

He'd expect nothing different. The older boy is all hands and no finesse -- he holds them all close when he can, almost desperate in his search for intimacy. Two years alone in an expanse of white, his thoughts his only company, have made him mature, but the need for warmth and to know that he's not alone again are things that never go away.

It's okay. Sometimes he'll wake up in the middle of the night and feel trapped, unable to escape the curtain of nightmares hanging over his head. Sometimes the nightmares he'll be trapped by aren't his own. It's not easy -- it's not -- but they stay. He soothes and gets soothed and in time, he doesn't feel the need to run.

 They sleep much too late and never wake until she comes barging in, yelling at them both to join the world of the living. They part, a grin and a scowl alike, but the closeness they feel doesn't leave.

* * *

She lets him hold her like she's dying.

She might as well be, because his dreams are haunted with less of her smiles and more of her mangled body and each time, he wakes up shivering. It's only when she wakes with him and whispers that _it's okay_ , lets him see her smile for real, that the tension wound tight within him looses. The nights without her are hard.

But it's more than that. He's no angel, and after so many loops in the string of time, neither is she. He's imagined her as kinder, brighter, better than the stubborn  girl she is, her own cowardice tied up in the knots of her scarf. He doesn't forget--neither does she--but the paths they walk are criss-crossed in all the wrong ways.

He's up before she is, always. The dawn paints her in blue, the very opposite of what she always tries to be. He can see her for what she is, then: a scared little girl who's lived while in death and who clings to hope like it's the only thing she has. He sees her, and she is beautiful.

* * *

He doesn't touch her much at all.

He loves her, just like he loves them all, but he can't. He still finds it hard to believe she's real, after all this time. She'd asked him why and felt regret; his answer was tinged sad, so unlike the boy she was used to. But he had answered. During the endless nights and scorching days of their half-afterlife, so many hallucinations of her had danced towards him and disappeared as soon as his fingers broached skin. The other two, they anchor him to this world, but he looks at her and he's scared to see her vanish.

So they sleep but not really, the space between them an unforgiving chasm.  It's not until she braves the fall and winds herself into his arms that peace comes to them both, the promise of _tomorrow_ , _too_ wringing a smile out of him. She loves him just as much, but she is discovering the boy underneath the fragile optimism and hopeful smiles. She thinks she loves him, too.

They stay that way until late afternoon because they're just too sweet to be disturbed.

* * *

She holds her hand the whole way through.

Why? Because no matter how much time they have together, she can never quite believe it. Being a computer program showed her more things than she ever knew about when she was really alive, but nothing ever prepared her for how this would feel, getting to hold her again. It's different than she's used to, the affection she carries for him a slow burn in her system, but this is love nonetheless.

There's not much they do when it comes to sleep. Their hands slide together as they slide under the covers, grins turned on each other like they're twelve and this is all some special kind of sleepover. They tell stories about the boys they love and about each other, too, laughing until they feel like they're about to get caught. There's relief on her face whenever she looks at her, and maybe that's a little much, she knows; but when she gets a smile back and the ends of a scarf thrown over her shoulders, she thinks it must not be so bad.

They're up bright and early and eager to face the day before the boys ever are. There are times when they wake them up, breakfast at the ready -- and then there are times they just climb into bed with them, grabbing a couple extra hours in the arms of the people they care about.

Maybe she likes those times the best.

* * *

They don't sleep.

Anyone who's tried to solve the troubles of cramming four people into one bed knows: there's no real solution. Someone is always kicking, complaining, getting up to wander to the bathroom or giggling like a madman. They can never find an arrangement that works, because both girls in the middle means tickle fights, and no matter who's where, he tries to reach for them all anyway. It doesn't matter what they do. There's no easy way about it.

So sometimes they sleep in pairs of two, together but not like they should be. Sometimes they sleep in a group of three, one straggler left on their minds. Sometimes nobody sleeps at all, be it night terrors or something worse, when the weight of lost time and memories that shouldn't be drag them all down. Sometimes they sleep alone.

But always, always, they end up together again. This is how they've persisted in fractured timelines and hope wrung out, and this is how they'll live in the days ahead: together.

* * *

In the morning, they'll be smiling, the promise of a new day the only guide they'll need.


End file.
